Warhorse

It is dusk and rains come across the Ka'u Desert.  The horses stand at the gate, hoping I will open it onto the new pasture, but they must wait.  This morning I went to see if the old gray mare, my father's "warhorse" in former days, had passed.  I hoped so.  She had fallen and could not get up.  Her time had come, but she had lingered, lying there under the sky.  I had put my hand on the gun to put her down, to put her out of her misery, there on the ground.  But a voice inside me had said no, that she would find her own way to the other side. Strong-willed horse, you were never afraid.
When I told my mother, who had fed her daily for the last three or four years and who could not bear to see her dying, that she had indeed gone, she said: "So she made the leap."
"Yes," I said.